Friday, April 30, 2010

A Short Trip and A Birthday Party

We woke up, stretched, scratched, had coffee, took showers, packed up, and got underway.  Destination?  A fifty mile trip to Barton’s Springs Recreation Area on Lake Normandy in Normandy, Tennessee.  This is a nice clean little campground managed by the Tennessee Valley Authority with 50A electric and water sites (if you can get them).  Here’s a photo of our site.

Our Site

This is the view out our back window – not too shabby, huh?

View From Our Back Window

And this is a portion of Normandy Lake which is a man made lake by the damming of the Duck River (similar to a Corps of Engineers project).

Normandy Lake

There are 42 electric and water sites with half of them being rented out as seasonal.  The other eleven fill quickly making it difficult to get a site.  There is a 21 day limit on stays (other than the seasonal sites).  The only site available for us was the handicap site which they are allowed to rent if all the other sites are filled.  There are quite a few no hook-up sites available if you are set up to do dry camping.

We get excellent Verizon air card coverage, decent OTA television signal (ABC, NBC, Fox, and PBS), and very limited AT&T cell phone coverage (if you go outside, stand on the picnic table, and tilt your head just right).

We took Brian to the hotel to get him checked in; Marc, Amie, and kids had already arrived from New Hampshire.  Then it was over to Joel’s house to celebrate birthdays.  Amie’s birthday was three days ago while Aunt Mary and Rocco celebrate their birthdays on the same day (April 29th).

The Birthday Kids

Joel prepared barbequed chicken, brats, and shish kebab on the grill and baked some marinated sweet potato sticks in the oven.  Miss Judy had prepared a fruit salad and a birthday cake for Mary and Rocco.  Joel’s parents (Greg and Dawne) along with one of Joel’s friends joined in with the Patterson’s to celebrate the occasion.  A good time was had by all.  Then it was home to bed thus bringing another day to a quick end.

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